Nathaniel K. Richards (Earth-6164)
Nathaniel K. Richards had the same exact history with his younger self, right until the latter was seemingly successful in finally defeating his future self Kang the Conqueror for good during the final days of the last known glorious event of the 21st century, recognizably known by many as the "Golden Age of Heroes." Along with this finally accomplished feat, Nate apparently was also successful in rewriting his destiny of becoming Kang himself, after his final defeat. However, as the Golden Age of Heroes was on the verge of an end, since most modern age heroes on Earth were forced to go into retirement due to old age or had already died, started a new rise of dystopia throughout the entire planet for the next several centuries, known as the "Dark Ages of the Heroic Era." The 30th Century After centuries of advancement and warfare, peace was eventually brought to the land by the contributions of the remaining heroes, including Nate, who still continues his heroic crusade as the Iron Lad. Since Nate had brought peace to this war-torn future, he became known as one of it's most renowned legendary benefactors, where he was recognized for annihilating the last known conflict of the Dark Ages that occurred across the entirety of the Eurasian Plate caused by the great hundred years war between Apocalypse and Lord Sinister. Nate's futuristic and improved technological inventions had also greatly helped him from aging biologically and consistently makes his way living pass into the future, reaching to a time by the end of the 30th century where humanity had gone pass and had been fully recovered from the Dark Ages. During the next several hundred years leading towards the 40th century, this generation's supreme scientists have successfully improved the nature biology to the point that they seem to age much slower than 21st century man. The 40th Century At the beginning of the 40th Century, Nate ended up alone and overwhelmed by his painful memories from the hundred years war during the Dark Ages after having to not being able to move on from the death of his loving wife Cassie Lang, who sadly died due to her unique body cells (her lifetime exposure to the Pym Particles) rejecting the effects of the serum that grants most people longevity around the time, causing for Nate to grief his loss for the rest of his life. He became desperate to end his pain and internal torment he even tried to travel back in time using the time travelling machine on his Iron Lad suit, only to realize that every time he tries and save his wife, it still ends up with Cassie dying in many sorts of ways, traumatizing him even more than he already was. It was the time of that life-changing moment when Nate himself, now fully consumed by rage & wickedness, and is driven to delusion and insanity having lose his sense and touch with reality, has come to such realization, a realization that there was no such thing as an escape for him to change his ultimate destiny, no to avoid becoming who he truly is in the end, slowly embracing his supposed fate as he determinedly turns himself into his once future self, Kang the Conqueror. As one of his first acts of violence, Kang mercilessly committed terror attacks, costing a number of countless casualties in a matter of two days. As the series of events have followed for the next few weeks, Nate was able to brought the entire country of the United States onto its knees, having no other who defender to protect and fix everything back to the way things were before. According to Kang himself, he "barely made any effort" during his first conquest over the country. To maintain control over the countries he has conquered, Kang sought out almost every rogue superhuman (e.g. mutates, mutants, even Inhumans) in those following countries and forced to serve him as his enforcers, and killed the ones who refused to do so. Manipulating the Timeline Ancient Egypt In a particular point in his life as a tyrannical dictator of the entire American and Eurasian plate, Nathaniel discovered a time machine that was encased inside a large space ship, located beneath the underground areas of the abandoned Baxter Building and having grown bored of his once peaceful time that he turned into a dark dystopian reality, he decided to "play god" and travel back in time to the past using the space ship he discovered, going to the timeline of ancient Egypt. There he set himself up as a Pharaoh Rama-Tut, where he had somehow had a family, until he was ousted from this position by the power of the firstborn mutant, En Sabah Nur (the mutant who would one day become known as Apocalypse), and his loyal followers, the Horsemen of Apocalypse. Before leaving Ancient Egypt, Kang decided to build one of his artificial intelligence an android body as a stand-in, given false memories from Kang's experience as the Pharaoh and was designated to act as Rama-Tut himself, in an attempt to continue his legacy in the Egyptian culture furthermore, to have a lifespan of more years right before the android naturally died, where it was eventually buried inside the Pyramid of Giza. Age of Enlightenment Following his short-lived reign on Egypt, he decided to travel towards a particular point of the late 18th century in Wisconsin, specifically during the Age of Enlightenment. At some point later in that timeline, the last known female descendant of Rama-Tut's lineage became married to a man by the name of Victor "Timely" Kang, a critical philosopher whose core interest and teachings was the nature of space and time, by the time of the 18th century, and as well as an inventor and a professor who frequently proposes his own principles of robotics, years after the death of Leonardo da Vinci and several more years even before the birth of Isaac Asimov. Unbeknownst to that descendant, she had basically married her foremost ancestor since Victor was Kang himself in actuality, with the latter's intention to keep his future descendance intact. As a result of his marriage to his own descendant, Victor and the woman had conceived six children, which was indeed an enough amount to keep the future fate of his own kind sealed for the next several centuries towards the modern age, 21st century. Out of honor towards outstanding philosophical theories regarding time and space and his underrated robotic principles, he was recognized as one of the most well-acclaimed philosophers and inventors during the Age of Enlightenment. Along with it, his descendant turned wife was also revealed to be the modern founder of a secret religious cult based off her ancestor, known as the Cult of Rama-Tut, much to Victor's delight and fascination for his descendant's loyalty towards his own kin. In dedication to the legacy of Rama-Tut, the group itself had built a strong discreet foundation within the Kang family, the cult itself had stood strong for over centuries until its value had seemingly ended within the family lineage by the beginning of the modern age. Modern Timeline Having enough patience to keep on living in his 18th century life for the next ten years, Kang had decided to end his term as Victor by promptly faking his own death, in order go back to his original current timeline, back to the 40th century. As Kang was on his way to riding his spaceship through the timestream, Kang accidentally drops one of his trophy vaults, containing his former Iron Lad armor, and a few other devices he once used, throughout the timestream itself, sending it in an unknown point in time. At first, Kang has never even cared when his suit had fallen into the timestream, but out of sheer curiosity, and an act of desperation to shut his mind from having too many thoughts on where the vault would have possibly landed, Kang decided to have a shortstop, following the traces of the vault in order to find out when and where it has landed. Following the traces of the suit's vault, Kang's ship has landed in the modern age, respectively at the exact location of where his childhood residence would have become someday, approximately three years in the future. Along with it, Kang had also discovered that out that was how his parents had found out about the neurokinetic armor below their residence's bunker, in which they would keep it hidden later, thinking that keeping it safe from Nate would be the best decision until he would grow up as an adult. And at that moment, Kang had also thought of an idea of indirectly helping out the younger Nathan Richards achieve his ultimate, inescapable destiny as Kang the Conqueror sooner. Forging his own Destiny In one of his first steps towards his scheme, Nate built an advance version of a L.M.D., containing an uploaded artificial intelligence similarly to those of the Vision who was designated to be named Jonas, giving "him" false memories about having a normal life in New York, with him voluntarily working at the Graham Windham youth development organization, giving him the role that would make him the future mentor of Nate. At some point in time later on, Kang was so desperate in making his younger self's history morbidly tragic exactly to how he experienced as a child, he traveled in time a few years into the future where Nate was already born, and unhesitatingly burned the Richards Residence, at the night of his own 9th birthday. When the great fire had promptly engulfed their entire home into flames, the younger Nate was almost killed inside his bedroom having suffocated by the smoke, similar to what has already happened to his parents at that night, Kang intentionally rescued an unconscious Nate, and carried the child outside his burning home to keep him alive and the timeline intact. Later on, Kang decided to six years later when was 15 years old, using the obvious advantage of being mentally linked to his younger self, Kang showed the boy his ultimate destiny through showing him visions of terror, which somehow proved to be a mistake, for at least a short while, until Kang immediately realized at everything that he was doing to Nate has already happened to him when he was fifteen years old, since he still remembers everything. Afterwards, Kang evidently followed both Nate and Jonas through their journey towards discovering his future fate and the Iron Lad armor, with Jonas finally finding out about his true being and nature. Following the incident when Nate had discovered his grim fate in the future as Kang, the latter continued his plan by commencing the same test experiment that led to the eventual formation of the Young Avengers, summoning the growing android, to whom he decided to call the Growing Man, which its role was to only wreak havoc across the narrow streets of New York City. As he expected according to plan, the young heroes have indeed form for the very first time, with the younger Nate eventually becoming of the leaders of the team. Unbeknownst to his younger self and his teammates, the small town havoc of the Growing Man was just the beginning of what's about to come and happen next, when he would have finally meet his own destiny, far later in the future. Osborn's Dark Reign Kang, now mostly reassured that his plans are going providently well, he tried to flee back to his own era, but was inescapably caught in the middle of a massive time storm and was forced to reappear once again after his ship had been struck by a cosmic lightning, damaging the ship's mainframe and controls, as it crash-landed back in the modern era of Earth-61615, only several years later, now during Norman Osborn's "Dark Reign" over the entire world for several months by then. With no where else to go to after his ship was broken, Kang then came into encountering and clashing with the Dark Avengers, which led into a destructive skirmish between the conqueror and the forces of Osborn's H.A.M.M.E.R. that occurred throughout the New York. In the end, Kang was unexpectedly defeated when Osborn, following the suggestion of Noh-Varr, had decided to secretly call in the Young Avengers to help them defeat and apprehend Kang for the very first time. At first, the young heroes, but since they realized that one of their core missions were to help Nate change his destiny from becoming Kang, they decided to help Osborn and the veracious villains defeat Kang on their own terms. After his first known defeat as the conqueror, Kang was imprisoned at the maximum security prison under the authority and custody of H.A.M.M.E.R., apparently for the rest of his life, with his weapons and equipment inspected, where it was all kept in a storage vault inside a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility within Brooklyn. Since his imprisonment, Kang's currently damaged spaceship was also inspected by the organization and Osborn decided to have it carefully transferred it in the Helicarrier Bay beneath the Triskelion, due to unknown reasons. Infinity War During his intended lifetime imprisonment at the Raft, Kang was reluctantly broken out of his highly-secured cell by Iron Lad himself, without having to trigger any of the facility's alarms, and offered his freedom, his weapons and equipment being handed back to him, and his way back home, in exchange for his help and effort in the heroes' cause against the Mad Titan, Thanos, who was on the pinnacle of recreating the universe on his own image after successfully wiping out half its population, apparently doing it as a desperate act to please Lady Death. However, the alliance of the surviving heroes, antiheroes, and several temporarily-redeemed villains including Kang himself, battled the Mad Titan Thanos, aided by the Cosmic Entities. During the Kang and Iron Lad teamed up to clash the bloodthirsty, outraging minions of Thanos, the Outriders and the Chitauri. The two temporal counterparts were able to the incoming attackers, only to be overwhelmed by Thanos himself later on, who manages to seriously injure Iron Lad after former almost crushed Nate inside his own armor, much to Kang's dismay seeing his younger self in pain, immediately saving Nate from death. In the process of the ensuing battle, Thanos had overlooked his adoptive daughter Nebula who was able to wrest the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos' hand. Her first act was to undo all that has occurred, which inadvertently freed the heroes and the cosmic entities and resurrected most of those who have once withered away into ash by the Titan's snap of changing reality, including the rest of the Young Avengers. Back to the Future The battle resumed afterwards against a gauntletless Thanos, and in the end it was Adam Warlock who finally possessed the Gauntlet after being reluctantly given by Nebula (who tried to kill her father out of revenge for his past sins), ending the cosmic conflict for the Infinity Gauntlet in the meantime. In the aftermath of Infinity War, Nate kept his promise to Kang, in which he helped his older self fix his spaceship so he could return to his home, the 40th century. Before leaving the modern timeline onboard his spaceship, Kang lastly told Nate that his destiny isn't such an atrocity he should be renouncing, and all he had to do was to embrace it, when the time comes. Afterwards, Kang entered his ship, and set off his course back to his timeline to see the current status of his rulership, apparently abandoning his crusade to make Nate into Kang sooner, at least for now. The Resistance Arriving back to his home timeline, Kang saw that so much has changed in his timeline, both for the better and for the worse. One of these changes was Kang finding about the demise of his frequent lover and lieutenant, Ravonna Renslayer, who was forced to be killed by Kang's second-in-command, Speed Demon, after she suddenly went all heroic and rebellious towards her own leader and tried to form a Resistance against the Empire of Kang for the freedom of America. Finding about in the hardest way possible, Kang was stricken with grief and sorrow, feeling betrayed even after her death, with his unstable emotions had accidentally killed a few of his men and almost killed Speed Demon after suffering from believing the fact that his own beloved would turn on against him, after he had done for her. As a consequence to her betrayal, Kang went back in time weeks earlier to an alternate past, exactly to the very moment where Ravonna first attempted to leave the Empire and abducted her to where she was, bringing her back to his present future timeline, to punish Ravonna by imprisoning her with the rest of of his collection of trophies located inside the secret vault of the abandoned Baxter Building, with Kang implying that her death was too easy of a consequence to her rebellious actions. Visitors from the Past ]] After imprisoning the temporal duplicate of Ravonna, Kang was then informed by his messengers that a "family of visitors" from the past had unexpectedly arrived inside the Baxter Building. After recognizing their appearances, Kang immediately had his men take down and kidnap the visitors, interrogating to why the Fantastic Four would come to the future in the form of the Scarlet Centurion, a persona that he created in acting and pretending as the former "monarch" of the future United States of America and the "leader" of the Resistance in their objective against Kang the Conqueror, during the arrival of the Fantastic Four. Moments before Kang turned into Centurion, he traveled back in time once again in a certain point in the past, recruiting his alternate past self as Kang so he could take his place in the meantime to take over his empire, while the prime Kang on the other hand, plays the role of Centurion inside the ruins of the Baxter Building, "assisting" the Fantastic Four. Honestly answering Centurion's question during their first encounter, Reed Richards told Centurion that they went back in time using the Baxter Building's time machine in order to find a possible cure for Ben Grimm's worsening condition, and if he stayed as the "Thing" for far too long, his rock-like skin would become permanent for the rest of his entire life. Centurion questioned to why Ben does not embrace his true being as the Thing, only to accidentally insult Ben with that response that almost led them to have a brutal fight, before being calmed down by Sue Storm, Reed's fiancée. As he expected out of Ben's reaction and knowing that Reed and Sue aren't married yet, these version of the Fantastic Four were revealed to have come from the distant past, a few years even before his younger self had met and encountered the superhero team. Centurion agreed to help the Fantastic Four, only to deceive the team, especially Reed, into "helping" him in the Resistance's lifelong mission, defeating Kang and his enforcers. As they were working on the cure for Grimm's condition inside the lab, Sue asked why he was willing to help them, when he hasn't even met them before. Centurion then partly told them the truth just so he could gain their trust even more, which was revealing his real identity, Nathan K. Richards, one of Reed Richard's long lost, distant cousin. Reed was confused by his revelation, since he had never met or have even heard of him before. Deciding not to "spoil the fun," Centurion simply hinted to Reed that they'll eventually meet his younger self, someday in the future. Aside from Centurion's background story, Reed also questioned the origins of Kang the Conqueror, to which Centurion tells him a fabricated origin about the latter, saying that Kang's true origins remains a mystery, with rumors only telling that he was a rogue time-traveler and a descendant of Victor von Doom. Kang Attacks Unbeknownst to Kang and the rest of the team, Johnny and Ben decided to roam and have a one-to-one talk on what he's truly feeling about his condition, when it was abruptly interrupted after Johnny accidentally stepped on a pressure pad located at the end of the halls, only meters away from the lab, where Centurion and Reed still currently were. Though it seem like everything they found out was coincidental, the two discovering the true horrifying events of the dark future was all part of Kang's game. Secretly finding out about what happened to Ben and Johnny, Centurion used his mental link to communicate with the Kang divergence, signalling his next objective to teleport inside the building, and ruthlessly attack Centurion and the Fantastic Four without stopping, interrupting Ben and Johnny, causing for them to leave the vault, and jeopardizing Reed's work on closely completing the serum of Ben's cure. Johnny and Ben tried to fight off Kang, but his power, forcing the two and the rest to follow Centurion on the hiding place. Due to the unexpected arrival of Kang, Centurion led the Fantastic Four to a secret vault, the same vault where both Ben and Johnny were earlier, and forced them to hide there, while Centurion "deals with Kang." Coming out of the vault, Centurion casually meets with the Kang remnant, thanking him for easily agreeing with his little game. Kang then asked his future self if he finally gets to go home afterwards, only to be stabbed through the chest with his own sword, killing him without any signs of remorse, telling the remnant that he would not be needing to. Following the actions of murdering his temporal counterpart, Centurion returns to the hidden vault, holding Kang's head as he brings it in front of the heroic team like it was nothing new to him, much to the horror experienced by the latter. Since Ben already knew Centurion was not to be trusted, he immediately takes action, but before he could have thrown his massive fist at him, the unhinged uses his advanced combat skills, easily taking down the rocky behemoth, followed by gassing the rest down, before imprisoning every each one of them, except for Ben whom Centurion had taken to the lab, with the rest of his collection of trophies, located within another vault in the building. The True Identity Upon waking up inside his encased cell, Reed was being watched by Centurion as they start another conversation. During that very conversation, Centurion finally reveals him all about his true complicated origins, and that he was the true Kang all along. Along with it, Kang also introduced Reed to a fellow prisoner, revealing to be his son, or at least a future counterpart of his future son with Sue, named Franklin. Eventually, Sue was able to get her and the rest of the Fantastic Four out of their cells and began their search for Ben, who was being experiment upon by Kang after he was close into creating the cure, but not before helping the imprisoned Resistance members escape the building first. However, in the wake of their escape with the rest of his prisoners, including the temporal duplicate of Ravonna Renslayer, Kang left Ben and went to get back up and created dozens of his temporal remnants to surround the prisons and prevent them from ever going home to their own timeline, and despite Kang knowing the risks of creating a larger fracture within the space-time continuum, he let his own unstable emotions and selfish ambitions of ruling the entire history of the "Prime Reality" get in the way, falsely assuring that he would still find a way if the structure of the multiverse were to suddenly collapse because of his reckless intentions. Kang and the temporal remnants arrived and encircled the members of the Resistance as they try and escape the Baxter Building, killing several prisoners in the process, despite the three's efforts to save them. Reed tries to fight Kang while Johnny and Sue help the prisoners flee, but Kang's powerful anti-matter weapon combined with his combatant skills had only made him the victor, weakening Reed. As Kang prepares to deliver the killing blow to Reed, Ben rescues him and the rest of the team, conclusively giving up his goal to revert his own self back to human form, and instead has decided to embraced his powerful form, accepting the heroic persona of the Thing within him. Nearing the end of their final show down, the heroic four and Renslayer ultimately battles Kang, with Reed successfully taking out all of Kang's counterparts out of existence using a improvisational device of his own design, ultimately enraging Kang in his allied selves' defeat. | Powers = Increased Lifespan: Kang is approximately over 100 years old chronologically, but the people of the next generation he's currently living in have successfully improved biology to the point that they seem to age much slower than 21st century man. Thus he appears to be a man in his early 40s. | Abilities = *'Gifted Intelligence' **'Superior Level Intellect' *'Experienced Engineer' *'Political Savvy' *'Expert Tactician' *'Skilled Combatant' *'Indomitable Will' | Strength = *'Class 10+' (with armor) *'Class 6' (without armor) | Weaknesses = *'Mental Instability' **'Insanity' **'Delusional' *'Mental Link to his Younger Self' | Equipment = *'Battle Armor': Kang's battle armor is produced from a rare synthetic alloy from the 40th century. It is neurokinetic, meaning it responds to his subconscious thoughts. Though Kang has no powers, his armor endows him with rough equivalents of super-human abilities. **'Enhanced Strength' **'Durability' **'Anti-Gravity Device' **'Video Communicator' **'Time Travel' **'Concussive Bolts' **'Weaponry' **'Electric Shock' **'Hover Pad' **'Survival Kit' **'Body Transference' *'Kang's Light of the Centuries Sphere' *'Kang's Time Scanner' *'Neurokinetic Armor' (formerly): Iron Lad's battle armor is produced from a rare synthetic alloy from the 40th century. It is neurokinetic, meaning it responds to his subconscious thoughts. Though Kang has no powers, his armor endows him with rough equivalents of super-human abilities. Kang's neurokinetic armor has since he lost it when he decided to return back to his timeline, later revealing that it consequently fell into the timestream, where his younger self would have later find it during the modern age of heroes. | Transportation = Possesses a large space ship, capable of travel through both time and space. | Weapons = He typically carries various weapons, such as an anti-matter defense screen generator, a "vibration-ray" projector, an electromagnetic field amplifier, neutrino-ray warheaded missile launcher (hand-gun size), electrical paralysis generator, nerve gas sprayer and a molecular expander. He commands a vast array of warriors from across all periods of time, including his own future era, armed with advanced weaponry. | Notes = | Trivia = }} Category:Time Travelers Category:Time Travel Category:Earth-6164 Characters Category:MarvelousMarty Category:Serial Killers Category:Murderers Category:Insane Characters Category:Villains Category:Advanced Longevity Category:Advanced Technology Wielder Category:Villains of Earth-61615 Category:Villains of Earth-6164 Category:Earth-61615 Category:Reality Manipulation Category:Neutral Characters Category:Anti-Hero Category:Formerly Deceased